Village Voice writer sues author Gerald Posner for lifting chunks of mob book for 'Miami Babylon'; New York Daily News, 9/7/10

Scott Shifrel, New York Daily News; Village Voice writer sues author Gerald Posner for lifting chunks of mob book for 'Miami Babylon':

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/07/2010-09-07_village_voice_writer_sues_author_gerald_posner_for_lifting_chunks_of_mob_book_fo.html#ixzz0yzkUUJgn

Un-Google That; ABA Journal, 9/1/10

Brendan L. Smith, ABA Journal; Un-Google That: Google's new pact may have crisscrossed copyright law:

"At the fairness hearing for the Google Books settlement, an overflow crowd filled U.S. District Judge Denny Chin's Manhattan courtroom and spilled into a separate room where spectators watched a video feed.

"Voluminous materials have been submitted, and we are working our way through them," Chin said at the Feb. 18 hearing. "There is a lot of repetition. Some of the submissions even quote some of the other submissions. I'm reading them twice."

The agreement weighs in at 179 pages with 16 attachments, and it has been opposed on several fronts, with the Justice Department raising antitrust concerns alongside authors' claims of copyright infringement."

http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/un-google_that/78714/

Appeals court rules game films showing NFL team's 1st logo violates artist's copyright; Los Angeles Times, 9/2/10

Larry O'Dell, Los Angeles Times; Appeals court rules game films showing NFL team's 1st logo violates artist's copyright:

"An amateur artist who designed the original logo used by the Baltimore Ravens won a partial victory Thursday when a federal appeals court ruled the commercial use of game and highlight films from the Ravens' first three seasons violates his copyright."

http://www.latimes.com/sports/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-us-ravens-logo-suit,0,6282798.story

Sharron Angle hit with R-J copyright infringement lawsuit; Las Vegas Sun, 9/3/10

Steve Green, Las Vegas Sun; Sharron Angle hit with R-J copyright infringement lawsuit:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/03/sharron-angle-hit-r-j-copyright-lawsuit/

Is The Contract Cast Members Sign To Be On Survivor Covered By Copyright? CBS Thinks So...; TechDirt.com, 9/3/10

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Is The Contract Cast Members Sign To Be On Survivor Covered By Copyright? CBS Thinks So...:

"Eric Goldman points us to the news that CBS sent a DMCA takedown to Scribd after the reality TV site RealityBlurred.com uploaded a copy of the contract castmembers sign before being able to go on the show Survivor, as well as a copy of the "rulebook" they receive. CBS apparently claimed that both of these were covered by copyright. Thankfully, RealityBlurred filed a counternotice, claiming fair use due to its use for reporting and commentary -- leading to a scary two week period where CBS would have to sue if it wanted to keep the document offline. However, the two weeks passed and CBS did not respond to notification from Scribd, meaning that the Survivor Contract and the Survivor Rulebook are back online."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100901/15345210865.shtml

Bartenders Looking For Greater Intellectual Property Protection For Drinks; TechDirt.com, 9/2/10

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Bartenders Looking For Greater Intellectual Property Protection For Drinks:

"Copycense points us to yet another story about another person in another industry whining about not getting enough monopoly privileges from the government. This time, believe it or not, it's bartenders wanting to protect mixed drink recipes. Seriously. Unfortunately, the writeup at the Atlantic, by food writer Chantal Martineau seems to get an awful lot of points about intellectual property totally mixed up. The article slips back and forth between trademark law and copyright law (which are extremely different) and then has this whopper:

The publication of a recipe can be legally protected, but the "expression of an idea," as the lawyers in the seminar explained, cannot. It's the reason musicians can't be sued for covering another band's song in a live show.

So many things wrong in two short sentences. First of all, no, the publication of a recipe cannot be protected. Straight from the US Copyright Office: "Mere listings of ingredients as in recipes, formulas, compounds, or prescriptions are not subject to copyright protection." That said, if there is "substantial literary expression" in, say, the description of how to prepare the recipe that part (and that part alone) could be covered by copyright, but that should have little impact on bartenders making similar mixed drinks. Also, copyright is, in fact, supposed to protect the expression, contrary to the statement above. This is the whole basis of the idea-expression dichotomy, which Martineau seems to get backwards. As for why musicians can't be sued for covering another band's song in a live show, that's got nothing to do with the difference between an expression and an idea, and everything to do with performance rights licenses from venues to PROs like ASCAP and BMI that (in theory) are supposed to cover the copyright (yes, there is one) on the composition."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100901/17381410868.shtml

The Era of Copyrighted Cocktails?; Atlantic, 8/31/10

Chantal Martineau, Atlantic; The Era of Copyrighted Cocktails?:

"So, can a cocktail be copyrighted? In short, no. The publication of a recipe can be legally protected, but the [following portion between brackets crossed out as correction for error in updated version of article] ["expression of an idea,"] idea of the recipe, as the lawyers in the seminar explained, cannot. [following portion between brackets crossed out as correction for error in updated version of article] [It's the reason musicians can't be sued for covering another band's song in a live show.] But few bartenders publish their recipes. They tend to pass them on as an oral tradition."

http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/08/the-era-of-copyrighted-cocktails/62153/

Copyright breaches land group in trouble; Sydney Morning Herald,

Kate Benson, Sydney Morning Herald; Copyright breaches land group in trouble:

"An anti-vaccination group is under fire for allegedly breaching copyright laws by selling newspaper and medical journal articles online without permission from the authors.

The Australian Vaccination Network, which was the subject of a public warning issued by the Health Care Complaints Commission last month, withdrew 11 information packs from its website yesterday after complaints from authors.

The packs, which were selling for up to $128, included home-made books filled with articles photocopied from journals around the world, information on drugs taken from MIMS, the medical guide used by doctors and nurses, and copies of brochures inserted in medication boxes by pharmaceutical companies.

Under the Copyright Act, articles can be copied for personal research or for use by students but cannot be disseminated widely or sold...

Mary-Anne Toy, from The Age newspaper, said she did not recall giving the network permission to sell her work and would seek payment. Leigh Dayton, a science reporter at The Australian newspaper, was also unaware her story was being sold.

Kate Haddock, a copyright lawyer, said those found breaching the law could face substantial damages.

Damages would increase if articles were reproduced in a way which would cause readers to think less of the writers, Ms Haddock said."

http://www.smh.com.au/national/copyright-breaches-land-group-in-trouble-20100831-14fna.html

German court rules against YouTube over copyright; Sydney Morning Herald, 8/27/10

Sydney Morning Herald; German court rules against YouTube over copyright:

"A German court ruled Friday that Google Inc.'s subsidiary YouTube LLC must pay compensation after users uploaded several videos of performances by singer Sarah Brightman in violation of copyright laws.

The Hamburg state court said the standardized question to users about whether they have the necessary rights to publish material is not enough to relieve YouTube of the legal responsibility for the content, especially because the platform can be used anonymously.

The wording of the court statement appears to be a major blow to YouTube's business model, but Google Germany spokesman Henning Dorstewitz told The Associated Press YouTube will appeal the decision detailed in the 60-page ruling."

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-technology/german-court-rules-against-youtube-over-copyright-20100827-13w8o.html

Indonesia is Asia copyright pirate centre: survey; Sydney Morning Herald, 8/25/10

Sydney Morning Herald; Indonesia is Asia copyright pirate centre: survey:

"Indonesia has the worst record when it comes to protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) in Asia and Singapore the best, a survey of expatriate business people showed Wednesday...

"Of the emerging Asian countries, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines are all poorly rated not only for their low level of IPR protection but also for such criteria as physical infrastructure, bureaucratic inefficiency and labour limitations," PERC said.

China also came under strong scrutiny because of the sheer size of its economy and the presence of large companies "capable of using pirated technology to compete in foreign markets," said PERC."

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-technology/indonesia-is-asia-copyright-pirate-centre-survey-20100825-13rzi.html

Lost in translation: why have we declared war on foreign dramatists?; (London) Guardian, 9/1/10

John M. Morrison; (London) Guardian; Lost in translation: why have we declared war on foreign dramatists?: Classic plays in foreign languages are being rewritten for modern audiences who have no idea that what they're seeing is quite different from, and vastly inferior to, the originals:

"Whatever will these silly foreigners get up to next? Did you hear about the Chinese version of Hamlet that gave the play a happy ending? Surely we all know you can't rewrite the classics, and my Chinese example is imaginary. But British theatre commits artistic assault and battery of this kind on an increasingly regular basis. The victims, sprawled in the wings with their scripts torn to shreds are invariably playwrights who had the misfortune not to write in English...

One can argue that in the theatre anything goes, particularly when the author is safely dead and long out of copyright. But one of the principles that marks off theatre from film is respect for the artistic integrity of the author's text, even when he or she is no longer around to complain. That's why we squirm to think of Nahum Tate reworking King Lear in the 1680s to give Shakespeare's tragedy a happy ending."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/sep/01/lost-translation-war-foreign-dramatists

YouTube Deals Turn Piracy Into Revenue; New York Times, 9/3/10

Claire Cain Miller, New York Times; YouTube Deals Turn Piracy Into Revenue:

"In the past, Lions Gate, which owns the rights to the “Mad Men” clip, might have requested that TomR35’s version be taken down. But it has decided to leave clips like this up, and in return, YouTube runs ads with the video and splits the revenue with Lions Gate.

Remarkably, more than one-third of the two billion views of YouTube videos with ads each week are like TomR35’s “Mad Men” clip — uploaded without the copyright owner’s permission but left up by the owner’s choice. They are automatically recognized by YouTube, using a system called Content ID that scans videos and compares them to material provided by copyright owners."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/technology/03youtube.html?_r=1&ref=technology

Of Two Minds About Books; New York Times, 9/2/10

Matt Richtel and Claire Cain Miller, New York Times; Of Two Minds About Books:

"By the end of this year, 10.3 million people are expected to own e-readers in the United States, buying about 100 million e-books, the market research company Forrester predicts. This is up from 3.7 million e-readers and 30 million e-books sold last year.

The trend is wreaking havoc inside the publishing industry, but inside homes, the plot takes a personal twist as couples find themselves torn over the “right way” to read. At bedtime, a couple might sit side-by-side, one turning pages by lamplight and the other reading Caecilia font in E Ink on a Kindle or backlighted by the illuminated LCD screen of an iPad, each quietly judgmental.

Although there are no statistics on how widespread the battles are, the publishing industry is paying close attention, trying to figure out how to market books to households that read in different ways.

A few publishers and bookstores are testing the bundling of print books with e-books at a discount."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/technology/02couples.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=print%20pixels&st=cse

Mark Waid on Delivery, Content, and the Gulf Between; ComicBookResources.com, 9/1/10

Mark Waid, ComicBookResources.com; Mark Waid on Delivery, Content, and the Gulf Between:

"So I was asked to deliver the keynote speech at the Harvey Awards this year. And I worked hard on it. Really hard. Notecard set after notecard set, document after document, draft after draft. Because I’d chosen a topic that I’m practically evangelical about, the tough part wasn’t coming up with stuff to say--the tough part was winnowing down the number of ideas. I went through an entire pocket notebook’s worth of paper writing and re-writing right up until my cue to speak. And that’s because I wanted to hit a home run. I really, really wanted to knock it out of the park in front of my peers.

And I didn’t.

I was uncharacteristically nervous, and it showed. I just listened to a partial recording, and while it was probably a solid double and not nearly as botched as I want to remember, to my ears, that speech was an absolute train wreck. I joked a few times about it being “a vodka-fueled rant” to cover my nervousness, but now that I listen to a playback, I get why some of the people in the room were ready to throw a punch: I didn't hit the points hard enough that I'M NOT SAYING WE SHOULDN'T GET PAID and I’M NOT ARGUING AGAINST OWNERSHIP. I did say those things, more than once, but not often enough and not at all in the back half of the speech, and I’m pretty sure that’s how I lost some of the audience, because I went off on tangents about sharing, and tangents are really dangerous territory when your speech doesn’t even begin until nearly 10:00 at night.

Worse, at least one audience member misinterpreted my speech as suggesting we should do away altogether with copyright and ownership and disagreed aggressively, and while that wasn’t at all what was said, if my message was misheard, I regret that profoundly and apologize to the listeners.

But while I may have fumbled the delivery, I’m still proud of the content (and would like it stated for the record that at no time did I “defend piracy”; seeing my speech reported as such really misses the point.) There is no written text, so no official transcript exists thus far, but Jonah Weiland has invited me to CBR to re-deliver the reconstructed speech to all (with its points better organized--I’m less nervous at a keyboard than I am with Jerry Robinson and Denny O’Neil staring expectantly back at me, go figure), so ready the tomatoes...

I’ve been asked a lot to speak about digital, because it’s such a passion with me and I’m such an advocate. But saying “Let’s cheer for digital comics!” seems kind of mundane. I want to talk tonight instead about how we fret about downloads and "piracy" and their impact. How we’re in danger because people are breaking copyright. But, first, let's talk a little about copyright and its history.

What most people don’t realize about copyright is that it was originally conceived to protect not artists but the public domain--to ensure that artists and writers and their heirs couldn’t have perpetual ownership of their work until the end of time because, at some point, the sentiment went, you ought to have to give back to culture the same way you, I, and all artists draw from it. Certainly, you should benefit from your work, and you should have legal protection, but I find it interesting that the original intent was to deliver ides back into the public domain.

Then, three hundred years ago exactly this year, publishers co-opted the copyright concept to create what are the foundation of today's copyright laws--but even then, they existed not to protect creative folks but, rather, publishers and printers. Copyright was about making sure no one could bootleg the printed work and compete with legitimate, licensed printers. It was about protecting distribution. Public domain was still seen as important, however, because no one then or now can argue that Western civilization would be better if Shakespeare's heirs still controlled his works and they couldn't be read in schools without payment, or if you had to pay a fee every time you wanted to even look at a Degas. Culture is more important than copyright.

That copyright system, however imperfect, worked for centuries. It was a decent balance of copyright and culture--you were allowed to profit from your work during your lifetime, your heirs even got many years' grace period afterwards, and then it all went back into the pool of public domain at some point long after you were dead. But for the past several decades, megacorporations have turned copyright into a perpetual revenue machine for them that will never end and never expire. That's great for individual copyright holders who draft off of that momentum, but it’s lousy for culture. Worse, it's led to a mindset among creators that the only acceptable reward for creativity is dollars and cents...

...but that leaves culture and public domain out in the cold, and again, culture is more important than copyright. No one's saying we shouldn't be compensated for our work, but we are obliged to give back at some point. Moreover--and I know that in hard economic times like these, it's very hard to remember this--I would also offer that being able to contribute to culture, having the satisfaction of knowing that we've done work that is embraced by others, watching our ideas spread and seed new ideas--if you're calculating overall job compensation, that is not without value.

“Yes, Professor Waid, you hippie freak, sharing is all well and good, but how does that pay my bills?”

I know. I know. We all still should be financially compensated for hard work so we can keep doing this and make a decent living. No argument. And that brings us back around to filesharing. If you're genuinely morally indignant about this issue, I understand and respect that. But I worry that a lot of the moral indignation I hear over filesharing is just a way of trying to mask our panic over how our ability to make a living with our art is quickly eroding under the current business models. And I understand that fear. I really, truly do.

Look, if you are in comics just to make money, I can respect that. Honestly, no sarcasm. But if you are here to create a sustainable living for yourself while at the same time finding some way to give back to the world, then filesharing is not a problem...it’s an opportunity.

Like it or not, downloading is here. Torrents and filesharing are here. That's not going away. I'm not here to attack it or defend it--I'm not going to change anyone's mind either way, and everyone in America at this point has anecdotal evidence "proving" how it hurts or helps the medium--but I am here to say it isn’t going away--and fear of it, fear of filesharing, fear of illegal downloading, fear of how the internet changes publishing in the 21st century, that’s a legitimate fear, because we’re all worried about putting food on the table and leaving a legacy for our children, but we’re using our energy on something we can’t stop, because filesharing is not going away.

And I’ll tell you why. It’s not because people “like stealing.” It’s because the greatest societal change in the last five years is that we are entering an era of sharing. Twitter and YouTube and Facebook--they’re all about sharing. Sharing links, sharing photographs, sending some video of some cat doing something stupid--that’s the era we’re entering. And whether or not you’re sharing things that technically aren’t yours to share, whether or not you’re angry because you see this as a “generation of entitlement,” that’s not the issue--the issue is, it’s happening, and the internet’s ability to reward sharing has reignited this concept that the public domain has cultural value. And I understand if you are morally outraged about it and you believe to your core that an entire generation is criminal and they’re taking food off your table, I respect that.

But moral outrage is often how we deal with fear. It’s a false sense of empowerment in the face of fear. And I’m here to tell you, that if at core you’re reacting not out of moral outrage but out of fear of the internet and the whole way publishing seems to be headed--that’s good news. Because that’s something we can fix.

We are the smartest, most creative medium in America. We put out ideas on a periodical basis bam, bam, bam. We don’t put out a screenplay every three years. We don’t invent a TV show every ten years. There are more ideas in one Wednesday in one comic shop than in three years of Hollywood. We're notoriously bad businessmen, but we are unmatched for creativity and inventiveness, and there are ways to make filesharing work for us rather than cower in fear that it’s going to destroy us.

I'm going to be rolling out some ideas in the next few weeks on how I personally want to make torrents work for me, not take away from me, and how I plan to shift the paradigm. Lots of you already have similar ideas or will, as well. I’m not saying that to plug anything I’m doing; I just want to go on record that I’m willing to walk the walk. My ideas may work. They may not work. But I’m going to share them. And if they don’t work, I’m going to keep trying. And I’m going to set up forums by which we can share our ideas on this, and I invite us all to throw them around. I really want us to keep that dialogue open. But we can define the terms of 21st century publishing and not have them defined for us.

I don’t want to be afraid. I don’t want to enter my third decade of my career terrified that publishing’s going down the tubes when we have the power to affect it. In fact, we have the advantage of being able to watch how other media have mismanaged their attempts at digital for ten years and learn from their mistakes. We can--and we will--find ways to make the internet work for us and for the enrichment of culture."

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=28129

Rights Holders Launch Initiative To Protect Content In Africa; Intellectual Property Watch, 8/26/10

Dugie Standeford, Intellectual Property Watch; Rights Holders Launch Initiative To Protect Content In Africa:

"Foreign content producers and broadcasters hope the soon-to-be-launched Africa Media Rights Watch will help convince the region’s regulators and consumers alike to increase respect for copyright."

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/08/26/rights-holders-launch-initiative-to-protect-content-in-africa/

Comic Book Writer Mark Waid Defends Copying, Points To The Value Of The Public Domain; TechDirt.com, 8/30/10

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Comic Book Writer Mark Waid Defends Copying, Points To The Value Of The Public Domain:

"[F]amed comic writer Mark Waid gave a keynote talk at the comics' Harvey Awards event over the weekend, where he apparently gave a stirring defense of unauthorized downloading, content sharing and the public domain..."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100830/03352510818.shtml

Russian spy Anna Chapman films risque video in Moscow; (London) Guardian, 8/26/10

Luke Harding, (London) Guardian); Russian spy Anna Chapman films risque video in Moscow:

"A diplomat's daughter, Chapman was the most high-profile of 10 Russian "sleepers" arrested in America in June after being caught trying to embed themselves in American society while secretly reporting to the Kremlin and leading double lives.

The first clue that Chapman was in Moscow surfaced this week when she posted a photo taken during the session on her Facebook page.

According to lifenews.ru, Heat is now taking legal action against Chapman, accusing her of breach of copyright. It is not clear when the magazine's exclusive with the 28-year-old spy, who spent several years working in London and is a former employee of Barclays Bank, will appear."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/26/anna-chapman-moscow-revealing-video

Copyrighting Fashion: Who Gains?; New York Times, 8/30/10

Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman, Freakonomics, New York Times; Copyrighting Fashion: Who Gains?:

"Kal Raustiala, a professor at UCLA Law School and the UCLA International Institute, and Chris Sprigman, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School, are experts in counterfeiting and intellectual property. They have been guest-blogging for us about copyright issues. Today, they write about new efforts to extend copyright law to the fashion industry."

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/copyrighting-fashion-who-gains/?src=twr&scp=2&sq=copyright&st=cse

[OpEd] Free That Tenor Sax; New York Times, 8/22/10

[OpEd] New York Times; Free That Tenor Sax:

"For jazz fans, nothing could be more tantalizing than the excerpts made available by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem of newly discovered recordings from the 1930s and ’40s. Nearly 1,000 discs containing performances by masters like Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Billie Holiday and the long-neglected Herschel Evans suddenly re-emerged when the son of the audio engineer, William Savory, sold them to the museum.

The museum is doing its best to clean up and digitize the recordings. But because of the way copyright laws work, excerpts may be all that fans can hear for some time. The museum paid for the discs, but cannot distribute the music until it has found a way to compensate the estates of the musicians, many of which may be very difficult to track down after all these decades."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22sun3.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse

Copycats vs. Copyrights; Newsweek, 8/20/10

Ezra Klein, Newsweek; Copycats vs. Copyrights: Does it make sense to legally protect the fashion industry from knockoffs?:

"At a certain point, copyrights stop protecting innovation and begin protecting profits. They scare off future inventors who want to take a 60-year-old idea and use it as the foundation to build something new and interesting. That’s the difficulty of copyrights, patents, and other forms of intellectual protection. Too little, and the first innovation won’t happen. Too much, and the second innovation—the one relying on the first—will be stanched."

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/20/copycats-versus-copyrights.html

Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review; New York Times, 8/24/10

Patricia Cohen, New York Times; Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review:

"“What we’re experiencing now is the most important transformation in our reading and writing tools since the invention of movable type,” said Katherine Rowe, a Renaissance specialist and media historian at Bryn Mawr College. “The way scholarly exchange is moving is radical, and we need to think about what it means for our fields.”

That transformation was behind the recent decision by the prestigious 60-year-old Shakespeare Quarterly to embark on an uncharacteristic experiment in the forthcoming fall issue — one that will make it, Ms. Rowe says, the first traditional humanities journal to open its reviewing to the World Wide Web...

Today a small vanguard of digitally adept scholars is rethinking how knowledge is understood and judged by inviting online readers to comment on books in progress, compiling journals from blog posts and sometimes successfully petitioning their universities to grant promotions and tenure on the basis of non-peer-reviewed projects...

“Knowledge is not democratic,” said Michèle Lamont, a Harvard sociologist who analyzes peer review in her 2009 book, “How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment.” Evaluating originality and intellectual significance, she said, can be done only by those who are expert in a field.

At the same time she noted that the Web is already having an incalculable effect on academia, especially among younger professors...

“There is an ethical imperative to share information,” said Mr. Cohen, who regularly posts his work online, where he said thousands read it. Engaging people in different disciplines and from outside academia has made his scholarship better, he said.

To Mr. Cohen, the most pressing intellectual issue in the next decade is this tension between the insular, specialized world of expert scholarship and the open and free-wheeling exchange of information on the Web. “And academia,” he said, “is caught in the middle.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/arts/24peer.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=venerable%20peer%20review&st=cse

[Book Review] An Un-'Common' Take On Copyright Law; NPR, 8/24/10

[Book Review] ]Michael Schaub, NPR; An Un-'Common' Take On Copyright Law:

"Some people believe that not only are current copyright laws too stringent, but that the assumptions the current laws are based on are artificial, illogical and outdated.

Among them is Lewis Hyde, a professor of art and politics who has studied these issues for years. In his new book Common As Air, Hyde says he's suspicious of the concept of "intellectual property" to begin with, calling it "historically strange." Hyde backs it up with an impressive amount of research; he spends a significant amount of time reflecting on the Founding Fathers, who came up with America's initial copyright laws.

Hyde is a contrarian, but he's not a scorched-earth opponent of all copyright laws. He does believe the national paradigm for intellectual property issues should be changed, though, at one point offering several examples of the absurd situations the current laws have created. (In one particularly weird example, an e-book publisher insisted its edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland "cannot be lent to someone else" and "cannot be read aloud.") Hyde advocates for a return to a "cultural commons" and quotes, approvingly, Thomas Jefferson, who believed that "ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129299939

[Book Review] A Republic of Letters; New York Times Book Review, 8/22/10

[Book Review] Robert Darnton, New York Times Book Review; A Republic of Letters:

"Intellectual property has become such a hot topic that it needs to be doused with some history. Strange as it may sound, this is an argument developed convincingly in Lewis Hyde’s “Common as Air,” an eloquent and erudite plea for protecting our cultural patrimony from appropriation by commercial interests."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/books/review/Darnton-t.html

Photographer Withdraws Lawsuit in Shepard Fairey Case; New York Times, 8/23/10

Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Photographer Withdraws Lawsuit in Shepard Fairey Case:

"The photographer who took the shot of Barack Obama that was later transformed by the street artist Shepard Fairey into the well-known “Hope” campaign poster has withdrawn a lawsuit against the Associated Press, in which he claimed he was not working for the agency when he took the picture."

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/photographer-withdraws-lawsuit-in-shepard-fairey-case/?scp=2&sq=copyright&st=cse

Theater Talkback: Who Owns Sheet Music?; New York Times, 7/15/10

Jason Robert Brown, New York Times; Theater Talkback: Who Owns Sheet Music?:

"[C]omposer Jason Robert Brown (“13,” “Parade”) discusses the ethics, creative implications and financial consequences of illegally downloading sheet music — including his sheet music — on the Internet."

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/theater-talkback-who-owns-sheet-music/

The Purpose of Copyright; Open Spaces, 8/10

Lydia Pallas Loren, Open Spaces; The Purpose of Copyright:

"The newspaper you read this morning, the television show you watched last night, the movie you are going to see this weekend, the computer software you use to prepare your letters or send your email, the music you listen to in the car on your way to work: they are all copyrighted. Copyright permeates our lives and yet, despite its impact on our lives, relatively few people, including lawyers, have sufficient knowledge or understanding of what copyright is. And far too many people, including lawyers, have major misconceptions concerning copyright. These misconceptions are causing a dangerous shift in copyright protection, a shift that threatens the advancement of knowledge and learning in this country. This shift that we are experiencing in copyright law reflects a move away from viewing copyright as a monopoly that the public is willing to tolerate in order to encourage innovation and creation of new works to viewing copyright as a significant asset to this country's economy. The most recent example of this shift is the new Digital Millennium Copyright Act, sign by the President on October 28, 1998.

Understanding the root cause and the dangers of this shift requires exposing the most fundamental and most common misconception concerning the underlying purpose of the monopoly granted by our copyright law."

http://www.open-spaces.com/article-v2n1-loren.php

Google's count of 130 million books is probably bunk; ArsTechnica.com, 8/9/10

Jon Stokes, ArsTechnica.com; Google's count of 130 million books is probably bunk:

""After we exclude serials, we can finally count all the books in the world," wrote Google's Leonid Taycher in a GBS blog post. "There are 129,864,880 of them. At least until Sunday."

It's a large, official-sounding number, and the explanation for how Google arrived at it involves a number of acronyms and terms that will be unfamiliar to most of those who read the post. It's also quite likely to be complete bunk...

But the problem with Google's count, as is clear from the GBS count post itself, is that GBS's metadata collection is a riddled with errors of every sort. Or, as linguist and GBS critic Goeff Nunberg put it last year in a blog post, Google's metadata is "train wreck: a mish-mash wrapped in a muddle wrapped in a mess."

Indeed, a simple Google search for "google books metadata" (sans quotes) will turn up mostly criticisms and caterwauling by dismayed linguists, librarians, and other scholars at the terrible state of Google's metadata. Erroneous dates are pervasive, to the point that you can find many GBS references to historical figures and technologies in books that Google dates to well before the people or technologies existed. The classifications are a mess, and Nunberg's presentation points out that the first 10 classifications for Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" classify it as Juvenile Nonfiction, Poetry, Fiction, Literary Criticism, Biography & Autobiography, Counterfeits and Counterfeiting. Then there are authors that are missing or misattributed, and titles that bear no relation to the linked work."

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/googles-count-of-130-million-books-is-probably-bunk.ars

Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s; New York Times, 8/13/10

Gina Kolata, New York Times; Sharing of Data Leads to Progress on Alzheimer’s:

"The key to the Alzheimer’s project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money, not just to do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public immediately, available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world.

No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort.

“It was unbelievable,” said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/health/research/13alzheimer.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=homepage&src=me

Viacom's billion-dollar lawsuit lives on; ArsTechnica.com, 8/12/10

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Viacom's billion-dollar lawsuit lives on:

"The billion-dollar Viacom lawsuit against YouTube/Google trudges on. After a federal judge sided completely with YouTube in summary judgment, Viacom has now filed its appeal to take the case to the next level."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/viacoms-billion-dollar-lawsuit-lives-on.ars

Why Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Fashion; New York Times, 8/13/10

Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman, New York Times; Why Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Fashion:

"It strikes many people as strange that fashion designs are not already protected against copying. Creative artists like musicians and filmmakers argue, quite persuasively, that their success requires copyright protection for their work. If others could steal it, they say, innovation would grind to a halt.

But there is a good reason that fashion designs have never been protected by copyright. Some designers have lost sales to knockoffs, but the copying of designs has not been a serious threat to the survival of the industry. To the contrary, much of the growth and creativity in the industry depends on imitation."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/opinion/13raustiala.html?_r=1&hp

The Most Ridiculous Bootleg DVD Covers Of All Time (PHOTOS); HuffingtonPost.com, 8/11/10

Katla McGlynn, HuffingtonPost.com; The Most Ridiculous Bootleg DVD Covers Of All Time (PHOTOS):

"You've seen them being sold on blankets on the streets of New York, on shelves in other countries, or even in your friend's living room: bootleg DVDs. Whether actually bootleg or just in foreign packaging, these DVD and VHS covers all have one thing in common and that is extreme misinformation. Take a look at that "Battlestar Galactica" DVD for example. Not only do they call it a "tween comedy" but they actually Photoshopped in the U.S.S. Enterprise from "Star Trek" on the front. On the front. Of the DVD. That they sell. It's a crazy world out there people, so next time you buy a movie or DVD of your favorite TV show, make sure you're buying the real thing."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/09/the-most-ridiculous-bootl_n_676490.html

Pat Conroy and the e-book future; Associated Press via YahooNews.com, 8/10/10

Hillel Italie, Associated Press via YahooNews.com; Pat Conroy and the e-book future:

"Conroy is a good example of the divided state of electronic books. With standard contracts now including digital rights, e-editions of his recent works — from "South of Broad" to a memoir out this fall, "My Reading Life" — are handled by Random House, Inc., which also releases the bound versions. Meanwhile, rights to his older books have shifted among outside companies."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100810/ap_en_ot/us_books_pat_conroy

Google: 129 Million Different Books Have Been Published; PC World, 8/6/10

Joab Jackson, PC World; Google: 129 Million Different Books Have Been Published:

"For those who have ever wondered how many different books are out there in the world, Google has an answer for you: 129,864,880, according to Leonid Taycher, a Google software engineer who works on the Google Books project.

Estimating the number of books in the world is more than an exercise in curiosity for the search giant: It also provides a roadmap of some of the work still left to be done in meeting the company's ambitious goal of organizing all the world's information...

As of June, the company has scanned 12 million books, according to a presentation given by Google Books engineering manager Jon Orwant at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference in Boston. These books have been written in about 480 languages (including 3 books in the Star Trek-originated Klingon language) .

The company plans to complete the scanning of existing books within a decade. The resulting virtual collection will consist of four billion pages and two trillion words, Orwant said.

About 20 percent of the world's books are in the public domain, Orwant explained. About 10 to 15 percent of these books are in print. The remaining books -- the vast majority of all titles -- are still under copyright but out of print. Google is in the process of borrowing copies of these books in order to digitize them, from about 40 large libraries worldwide.

It's this act of scanning in books that are out-of-print but still covered by copyright that has been met with some resistance by the publishing industry.

The company is now waiting for a judgement from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, on whether it can scan these books. "

http://www.pcworld.com/article/202803/google_129_million_different_books_have_been_published.html

Sunday Times faces £150,000-plus payout over Jimi Hendrix CD; (London) Guardian, 8/6/10

Josh Halliday, (London) Guardian; Sunday Times faces £150,000-plus payout over Jimi Hendrix CD: US companies linked with musician's estate win ruling that paper did not obtain proper copyright clearance for giveaway disc:

"High court judge Sir William Blackburne last Friday ruled that the Sunday Times covermount had delayed by a year the receipt of $5.8m in earnings to Experience Hendrix and Last Experience from the Hendrix concert film. He ordered Times Newspapers to pay damages equivalent to one year's interest on that sum.

The exact damages figure is still being worked out by the two sides' legal teams, but MediaGuardian.co.uk understands it will be just over $250,000."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/06/sunday-times-jimi-hendrix-cd

The Music-Copyright Enforcers; New York Times, 8/8/10

John Bowe, New York Times; The Music-Copyright Enforcers:

"Baker, 30, is a licensing executive with Broadcast Music Incorporated, otherwise known as BMI. The firm is a P.R.O., or performing rights organization; P.R.O.’s license the music of the songwriters and music publishers they represent, collecting royalties whenever that music is played in a public setting. Which means that if you buy a CD by, say, Ryan Adams, or download one of his songs from iTunes, and play it at your family reunion, even if 500 people come, you owe nothing. But if you play it at a restaurant you own, then you must pay for the right to harness Adams’s creativity to earn money for yourself. Which leaves you with three choices: you can track down Ryan Adams, make a deal with him and pay him directly; you can pay a licensing fee to the P.R.O. that represents him — in this case, BMI; or you can ignore the issue altogether and hope not to get caught.

P.R.O.’s like BMI spend much of their energy negotiating licenses with the biggest users of music — radio stations, TV and cable networks, film studios, streaming Internet music sites and so on. But a significant portion of BMI’s business is to “educate” and charge — by phone and in person — the hundreds of thousands of businesses across America that don’t know or don’t care to know that they have to pay for the music they use. Besides the more obvious locales like bars and nightclubs, the list of such venues includes: funeral parlors, grocery stores, sports arenas, fitness centers, retirement homes — tens of thousands of businesses, playing a collective many billions of songs per year.

Most Americans have no problem with BMI charging for its music — except when they do. As Richard Conlon, a vice president at BMI in charge of new media, put it: “A few years back, we had Penn, Schoen and Berland, Hillary’s pollster guys, do a study. The idea was, go and find out what Americans really think about copyright. Do songwriters deserve to be paid? Absolutely! The numbers were enormously favorable — like, 85 percent. The poll asked, ‘If there was a party that wasn’t compensating songwriters, do you think that would be wrong?’ And the answer was, ‘Yes!’ So then, everything’s fine, right? Wrong. Because when it came time to ask people to part with their shekels, it was like: ‘Eww. You want me to pay?’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08music-t.html

How to Find Cheaper College Textbooks; New York Times, 8/3/10

Tara Siegel Bernard, New York Times; How to Find Cheaper College Textbooks:

"The cost of buying the textbooks can easily add up to $1,000 a year or more.

Thankfully, federal rules that went into effect in July may help ease the pain. Publishers can no longer bundle their textbooks with accompanying materials like workbooks, and they must reveal their prices to professors when making a sales pitch. Colleges, meanwhile, are now required to provide students with a list of assigned textbooks during course registration, which allows for more time for shopping before classes begin.

That’s especially important now because there are an increasing number of ways to save on books if you buy or rent them online. This Times article from last year provides a lot of helpful information. But we also spoke with Nicole Allen, textbook advocate at the Student Public Interest Research Groups, for some more tips.."

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/how-to-find-cheaper-college-textbooks/?src=me&ref=homepage

Schumer Bill Seeks to Protect Fashion Design; New York Times, 8/5/10

Cathy Horyn, New York Times; Schumer Bill Seeks to Protect Fashion Design:

"The American fashion industry has been pushing hard over the last four years for copyright protection for its designs. A bill in the House of Representative died in committee after clothing makers argued that protection against knock-offs would only encourage frivolous lawsuits from people claiming they had the idea first. Today, after a year of negotiations, Senator Charles E. Schumer introduced a bill that seemed to satisfy the different sides of the fashion industry — and may provide some protection, too.

The bill, the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act, has the support of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), whose individual members represent the creative core of the industry, and the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA), which represents more than 700 manufacturers and suppliers and by its estimate accounts for about 75 percent of the industry’s business. The AAFA had argued that the House bill was too broad and would expose its members to lawsuits."

http://runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/schumer-bill-seeks-to-protect-fashion-design/?scp=3&sq=copyright&st=cse

Beach Boys' label wants writing credit and royalties for Katy Perry's 'California Gurls'--but they're not suing yet; EntertainmentWeekly.com, 8/5/10

Leah Greenblatt, EntertainmentWeekly.com; Beach Boys' label wants writing credit and royalties for Katy Perry's 'California Gurls'--but they're not suing yet:

http://music-mix.ew.com/2010/08/05/katy-perry-beach-boys-california-gurl/

Gary Friedrich's Ghost Rider lawsuit against Marvel lives on; ComicBookResources.com, 8/3/10

Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Gary Friedrich's Ghost Rider lawsuit against Marvel lives on:

"A lawyer for Ghost Rider co-creator Gary Friedrich asserts the writer's copyright-infringement lawsuit against Marvel will proceed, despite reports in June that the action had been dismissed."

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/08/gary-friedrichs-ghost-rider-lawsuit-against-marvel-lives-on/

JailbreakMe released for Apple devices; (London) Guardian, 8/2/10

Josh Halliday, (London) Guardian; JailbreakMe released for Apple devices: JailbreakMe – which will unlock iPhones, iPads and iPods – ruled legal by the US Library of Congress:

"Less than a week after the US Library of Congress established the "jailbreaking" of Apple iPhones as "fair use", a plucky hacker yesterday launched a browser-based service to do just that.

JailbreakMe 2.0 will "jailbreak" – unlock from restrictions imposed by the manufacturer – the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad when visited from the device."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/aug/02/jailbreakme-released-apple-devices-legal

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age; New York Times, 8/2/10

Trip Gabriel, New York Times; Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age:

"“This generation has always existed in a world where media and intellectual property don’t have the same gravity,” said Ms. Brookover, who at 31 is older than most undergraduates. “When you’re sitting at your computer, it’s the same machine you’ve downloaded music with, possibly illegally, the same machine you streamed videos for free that showed on HBO last night.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/education/02cheat.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=copy%20paste&st=cse

Tata to sue Greenpeace over turtle game; (London) Guardian, 7/26/10

Adam Vaughan, (London) Guardian; Tata to sue Greenpeace over turtle game: Indian manufacturing giant is suing for use of its logo in a spoof computer game highlighting port's threat to local wildlife:

"The Indian manufacturing giant Tata is suing Greenpeace India over a computer game it has created to publicise the alleged impact on turtles from the company's development of a new port.

The Pac-Man-style game is defamatory and an abuse of copyright, Tata Sons, Tata companies' bulk shareholder, said on Friday at the New Delhi high court. The court has served notice to Greenpeace, which has until 12 August to respond in writing to the lawsuit.

Greenpeace India launched the game at the start of June, the latest step in its seven-year campaign against Dhamra port, which is due to open this summer at Bhadrak in Orissa, a state on India's eastern coast. The environmental group alleges that the development will endanger local turtles. Turtle Vs. Tata, which is still live online and has been played by nearly 25,000 people, places a turtle in the role of Pac-Man battling against Tata logos in the place of ghosts."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/26/tata-sue-greenpeace-turtle-game

Judge rules Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany are derivative characters; ComicBookResources.com, 7/31/10

Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Judge rules Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany are derivative characters:

"A federal judge has dealt another blow to Todd McFarlane in his long-running copyright dispute with Neil Gaiman, ruling that the characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany are mere derivatives of their earlier creations.

In a decision filed Friday, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb declared that the three characters are simply variations of Medieval Spawn and Angela, co-created by Gaiman in 1993 for McFarlane's Spawn series. Therefore, McFarlane has until Sept. 1 to provide Gaiman with an accounting of money earned from Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany. As co-owner of the copyrights, Gaiman is entitled to one-half of the profits."

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/07/judge-rules-dark-ages-spawn-domina-and-tiffany-are-derivative-characters/

Watch Out For the Omega Copyright Windup; Wall Street Journal, 7/30/10

Eric Felten, Wall Street Journal; Watch Out For the Omega Copyright Windup: A case about pricing timepieces could crimp library lending:

"Katharine Hepburn couldn't understand why Jimmy Stewart didn't devote himself to his art. Their characters in the 1939 movie, "The Philadelphia Story," are walking back from the local library, where Hepburn has acquired a copy of Stewart's collection of short stories: "When you can do a thing like that book, how can you possibly do anything else?" she asks (knowing that he has sunk to the rank of gossip reporter).

"You may not believe this, but there are people that must earn their living," he answers.

"Of course," she says, "but people buy books, don't they?"

"Not as long as there's a library around."

Stewart's hard-scrabble scribbler would be pleased to learn that a Supreme Court case scheduled to be argued in the coming term could put the kibosh on library lending, at least of those books published or printed outside the U.S. In a friend-of-the-court brief, the American Library Association and other library groups argue that a recent Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision "threatens the ability of libraries to continue to lend materials in their collections."

The librarians fear they are going to suffer collateral damage from a curious copyright case that has nothing to do with books. It's Costco Wholesale Corporation v. Omega, S.A.—a battle over whether the storied Swiss watch brand can control where and at what price its chronometers are sold in the U.S...

No doubt Omega was smart to turn to copyright law, given what an increasingly powerful tool it is. The number of years copyright lasts has been repeatedly lengthened, and juries have been known to hand down fines in the millions for illegally downloading a few dozen songs.

The strange and logically contradictory thing, though, is that copyright has been gaining in power at the very same time it has been rendered impotent. Some critics, such as Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, argue that copyright has become an oppressive behemoth; others, such as novelist Mark Helprin, lament that the old circle-c is being turned into a dead letter.

They are both right. In response to rampant violation of copyright, the entertainment industry, publishers and other such businesses have gotten Congress to beef up intellectual property protections. But "the worldwide copying machine called the Internet," as Suffolk University professor of law Stephen Michael McJohn puts it, continues to hum along, undeterred. The result, says Mr. McJohn, is a bizarre legal disconnect: "Almost everything is copyrightable, and almost everything is used without regard for copyright.""

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703977004575393160596764410-lMyQjAxMTAwMDMwMDEzNDAyWj.html

Copy Fight; Reason, 7/27/10

Greg Beato, Reason; Copy Fight: A new front opens in the battle over online copyright infringement:

"Since 2003, Clayton Cramer, an author and historian who has written numerous books on the right to keep and bear arms and the evolution of America’s gun culture, has edited a website that is currently called The Armed Citizen. With the help of another contributor, David Burnett, Cramer uses the site as a repository for newspaper articles that document instances where firearms owners use their weapons in self-defense. Over the years, the pair had posted excerpts and complete text of approximately 4,700 articles, and in doing so, they created a unique and useful archive for researchers, activists, and people who simply enjoy feel-good tales of homeowners protecting themselves and their property from intruders and assailants by any means necessary.

In all that time, they say, they’d never received a single request from a copyright owner to remove an article. Last week, however, Cramer and Burnett were caught off-guard by a figure who aims to establish himself as the new sheriff in the lawless wilds of cyberspace. He was packing a .36 caliber copyright infringement lawsuit and he didn’t bother with a warning shot. Instead, Cramer and Burnett only learned they were being sued after a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun contacted them about the case.

The man who brought the suit against The Armed Citizen is named Steve Gibson. He’s the founder of a company called Righthaven. Righthaven’s business model involves acquiring the copyrights for specific articles originally published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, then filing lawsuits against website owners who have posted those articles without permission. In March, it filed its first lawsuit against a New Jersey company called MoneyReign."

http://reason.com/archives/2010/07/27/copy-fight

The Day of the Jackal; Economist, Prospero Blog, 7/27/10

Economist, Prospero Blog; The Day of the Jackal:

"ANDREW WYLIE is a famously shrewd literary agent, having acquired his nickname, “The Jackal”, as a result of his ability to negotiate unusually large advances from publishers for the authors he represents. Not surprisingly, this has helped him build up a roster of clients that includes many leading writers (he represents, among others, Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, the estate of John Updike and several Economist writers, including the editor). So Mr Wylie’s announcement last week of a deal with Amazon to publish electronic versions of books by several of his authors has understandably been viewed by the traditional publishers that he will bypass as a declaration of war.

Mr Wylie is starting by publishing electronic versions of some classics, such as Mr Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” and Updike’s “Rabbit” novels. Some publishers argue that they own the electronic rights to such classics, under contracts signed before anyone thought there would be electronic books—an ownership claim that authors and their agents vigorously dispute. Random House, one of the giants of book publishing, reacted to Mr Wylie’s move by announcing that it now regards the Wylie Agency as a competitor, and that “Random House on a worldwide basis will not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved.” Random House’s move was backed by HarperCollins UK, a book-publishing division of News Corp.

Not surprisingly, authors are rallying behind Mr Wylie. On July 26th the Authors Guild issued a statement arguing that “to a large extent, publishers have brought this on themselves.” In particular, in contracts for works produced since agents started discussing royalties for electronic books, publishers have at most been willing to offer authors 25% of net revenues on e-books, compared with the typical 50% split for printed books.

The Authors Guild predicts that low e-book royalties will not last, and publishers are simply playing for time, taking their extra margin while they can. But with Amazon revealing last week that it sold more e-books than hardbacks in its latest quarter, authors will care increasingly about their cut from e-books than from print—and their market power will surely prevail. Marjorie Scardino, the boss of Pearson, a firm which owns several book publishers, including Penguin (and is also part-owner of The Economist), said on July 26th that eventually “we will see a rise in royalty rates.”

Still, Mr Wylie’s move may also give authors some grounds for disquiet, as an agent publishing works by those authors he represents gives rise to obvious potential conflicts of interest. As the Authors Guild points out, “a major agency starting a publishing company is weird, no matter how you look at it. This sort of weirdness will only multiply, however, as long as authors don't share fairly in the rewards of electronic publishing. Publishers seeking to manage this transition well should cut authors in appropriately.”

Publishing houses tempted to keep dragging their feet should consider the possibility that they risk losing more than just having to give up a further 25% of net revenues: e-books are fast coming to represent a big share of writers' income (on July 27th Amazon said Stieg Larsson, author of the bestselling "Millennium Trilogy" had become the first writer to sell 1m copies on its Kindle e-reader), and if dealing directly with big e-book sellers like Amazon proves successful, many writers may start to ask themselves whether they still need to sign up with traditional publishers at all."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2010/07/andrew_wylies_publishing_deal_amazon

Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are "fair use"; ArsTechnica.com, 7/26/10

Nate Anderson, ArsTechnica.com; Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are "fair use":

"Every three years, the Library of Congress has the thankless task of listening to people complain about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA forbade most attempts to bypass the digital locks on things like DVDs, music, and computer software, but it also gave the Library the ability to wave its magical copyright wand and make certain DRM cracks legal for three years at a time.

This time, the Library went (comparatively) nuts, allowing widespread bypassing of the CSS encryption on DVDs, declaring iPhone jailbreaking to be "fair use," and letting consumers crack their legally purchased e-books in order to have them read aloud by computers."\

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/apple-loses-big-in-drm-ruling-jailbreaks-are-fair-use.ars

iPhone 'Jailbreaking' Legal Under New Government Rules; Huffington Post, 7/26/10

Joelle Tessler, Huffington Post; iPhone 'Jailbreaking' Legal Under New Government Rules:

"Owners of the iPhone will be able to legally unlock their devices so they can run software applications that haven't been approved by Apple Inc., according to new government rules announced Monday.

The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized use of copyright-protected material. The Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing uses of copyright-protected works.

For iPhone jailbreakers, the new rules effectively legitimize a practice that has been operating in a legal gray area by exempting it from liability. Apple claims that jailbreaking is an unauthorized modification of its software.

Mario Ciabarra, founder of Rock Your Phone, which calls itself an "independent iPhone application store," said the rules mark the first step toward opening the iPhone app market to competition and removing the "handcuffs" that Apple imposes on developers that want to reach users of the wildly popular device.

Unless users unlock their handsets, they can only download apps from Apple's iTunes store. Software developers must get such apps pre-approved by Apple, which sometimes demands changes or rejects programs for what developers say are vague reasons.

Ciabarra noted that Google Inc. has taken a different approach with its Android operating system, which is emerging as the biggest competitor to the iPhone. Google allows users of Android phones to download applications from outside the Android Market.

Although Apple has never prosecuted anyone for jailbreaking, it does use software upgrades to disable jailbroken phones, and the new government rules won't put a stop to that. That means owners of such phones might not be able to take advantage of software improvements, and they still run the risk of voiding their warranty.

Apple spokesman Natalie Kerris said Monday that the company is concerned about jailbreaking because the practice can make an iPhone unstable and unreliable.

"Apple's goal has always been to ensure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone, and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience," she said.

In addition to jailbreaking, other exemptions announced Monday would:

_ allow owners of used cell phones to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers.

_ allow people to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws.

_ allow college professors, film students, documentary filmmakers and producers of noncommercial videos to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism or commentary.

_ allow computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.

_ allow blind people to break locks on electronic books so that they can use them with read-aloud software and similar aides.

Although the jailbreaking exemption is new, all the others are similar to the last set of exemptions, which were announced in November 2006. The new rules take effect Tuesday and are expected to last a few years.

The exceptions are a big victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had urged the Library of Congress to legalize several of them, including the two regarding cell phones.

Jennifer Stisa Granick, EFF's civil liberties director, said the rules are based on an important principle: Consumers should be allowed to use and modify the devices that they purchase the way they want. "If you bought it, you own it," she said."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/iphone-jailbreaking-legal_n_659272.html

Surprising New DMCA Exceptions: Jailbreaking Smartphones, Noncommercial Videos Somewhat Allowed; TechDirt.com, 7/26/10

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.com; Surprising New DMCA Exceptions: Jailbreaking Smartphones, Noncommercial Videos Somewhat Allowed:

"Well here's a surprise. The US Copyright Office finally used its obligated DMCA exemption rulemaking process to support exemptions that protect consumers. As you may recall, every few years the US Copyright Office is obligated, by law, to listen to requests for specific classes of work that should be exempted from the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause and then recommend that the Library of Congress adopt certain exemptions (if it so chooses). Usually the exemptions are extremely limited and do little to protect consumers. In fact, in the past, the EFF has argued it wasn't even worth requesting exemptions for consumer issues, saying the process was "simply too broken." This year, however, they did participate, and actually got some things through."...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100726/09564610361.shtml

Online Course Construction Gets a 'Do-It-Yourself' Web Site; Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/23/10

Sophia Li, Chronicle of Higher Education; Online Course Construction Gets a 'Do-It-Yourself' Web Site:

"A new player entered the field of open online education last week: Nixty, a Web site that allows any user to take and create courses for free.

The new learning platform started up with over 200 course offerings culled from open-source content already available online, such as courses from the Khan Academy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare Project. Nixty's users have begun developing about 120 new courses since its launch, said Glen Moriarty, the company's chief executive.

Nixty comes with all the trappings of most course-management systems: a grade book, testing, discussion boards. Mr. Moriarty used to head and is still in the leadership team at Scholar360, which develops course-management software. But right now, Nixty is meant to help make educational content free, open, and easy to access.

Other sites exist that put together the open-source educational materials available, said David Wiley, an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University. (Mr. Wiley, who founded Utah's Open High School, has been a guest blogger on Wired Campus.) Nixty is unique, though, in also offering ways for students and instructors to connect with one another, he said.

Students can ask other users questions, and instructors can collaborate to improve their teaching materials, Mr. Moriarty said.

But Nixty's current features are only the beginning of what its creators have planned, according to Mr. Moriarty.

In the next month, the five-person team behind Nixty plans to roll out a payment system for courses, Mr. Moriarty said. Instructors will be able to charge students who want to enroll in their courses, but Nixty will charge instructors $4.99 a month for three such courses and a commission of 20 percent of the money instructors take in.

Mr. Moriarty hopes to establish partnerships with several online institutions, including Excelsior College and Western Governors University, and he thinks Nixty will be a way for institutions to offer continuing-education courses online, he said. He also envisions Nixty helping students to earn course credit through the College-Level Examination Program.

So far, public activity on the site is minimal. According to Mr. Moriarty, none of the 120-odd courses users are developing on Nixty have gone public yet. In Nixty's nascent stages, it's hard to say if it will live up to its founders' dreams—but that's not to say their hopes aren't lofty.

"Google is the default search engine," Mr. Moriarty said. "We want Nixty to be the default educational engine.""

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Online-Course-Construction/25732/